gen. wesley clark freaks out

– Hilary Leila Kreiger, JPost

During the ABC debate held here last week, Clinton singled out one of her supporters from the stage, and it was neither of her top local boosters, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell nor Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter. Instead, she pointed to a retired four-star general who once served as the supreme commander of NATO. “General Wesley Clark is here in the audience with me, as one of my major supporters,” she said, as the camera focused on him acknowledging her words. His support, and that of other military figures, has been key as Clinton has tried to make the case that she would be the best commander-in-chief—no small task for a female candidate. She has cultivated deep ties with the military during her service on the US Senate’s Armed Forces Committee, ties on which she has called throughout her campaign and particularly in recent weeks when she has tried to argue that her rival Obama doesn’t have the national security credentials for the job. Clark has been at the top of the pack of Clinton’s military cadre, appearing with her at major foreign policy addresses and surfacing in rumors as a possible running mate. Yet Clark could pose a potential liability among Jewish voters, just as the Jewish Rendell poses a benefit. Clark made some Jews uncomfortable back in January 2007 in comments to liberal blogger Arianna Huffington. In the interview, he referred to the concept of bombing Iran before exhausting diplomatic options as “outrageous,” and then reportedly answered that what made him sure the US was moving towards such an attack was that,

You just have to read what’s in the Israeli press. The Jewish community is divided, but there is so much pressure being channeled from the New York money people to the office-seekers.

ADL’s Abe Foxman spoke to Clark about his comments, particularly the offense taken at the phrase “New York money people.” He later told The Forward newspaper,

He is a friend of Israel and is not an anti-Semite … but some of the things he said are very, very unfortunate.

When asked about the possibility that he represented a liability with Jewish voters because of his controversial comments, Clark became visibly agitated, saying,

I haven’t made any comments that have caused any problem. My father was Jewish. Do you know that? Do you know that? My father was Jewish, okay? I was in Israel in September. I’ve got a lot of friends there. I’m very well-respected in the Jewish community, and in the Israeli Jewish community. Thank you.

jeff stein : cia drug assisted interrogations

Evidence Grows of Drug Use on Detainees
Jeff Stein, Congressional Quarterly, April 4, 2008

There can be little doubt now that the government has used drugs on terrorist suspects that are designed to weaken their resistance to interrogation. All that’s missing is the syringes and videotapes. A window opened on the practice with the declassification of John Yoo’s instantly infamous 2003 memo approving harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects. Yoo advised top Bush administration officials that interrogators could employ mind-altering drugs if they did not produce “an extreme effect” calculated to “cause a profound disruption of the senses or personality.” Yoo had first rationalized the use of drugs in a 2002 memo for top Bush administration officials. But this latest revelation shows Yoo reiterating conditions on the use of drugs a year later, despite the rising resistance to harsh interrogation techniques by military lawyers and the FBI. Stephen Miles, a University of Minnesota bioethicist and author of Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror, comments,

The new Yoo memo, along with other White House legal memoranda, shows clearly that the policy foundation for the use of interrogational drugs was being laid. The recent memo on mood-altering drugs does not extend previous work on this area. The use of these drugs was anticipated and discussed in the memos of January and February 2002 by DoD, DoJ, and White House counsel using the same language and rationale. The executive branch memos laid a comprehensive and reiterated policy foundation for the use of interrogational drugs.

Jeffrey S. Kaye, a clinical psychologist who works with torture victims at Survivors International in San Francisco, told me,

Yes, I believe they have been used. I came across some evidence that they were using mind-altering drugs, to regress the prisoners, to ascertain if they were using deception techniques, to break them down.

Yet the situation remains unclear. The Pentagon’s use of sedatives to help calm shackled and hooded prisoners during long “rendition” flights from the Middle East to Guantanamo has been widely reported, but hard evidence that U.S. interrogators today are employing hallucinogens, like the LSD the CIA tested on unwitting subjects for at least 20 years beginning in the 1940s, has yet to surface. Michael Caruso, the chief federal defender appointed to represent al Qaeda suspect Jose Padilla, asserted in a motion last year that his client

was given drugs against his will, believed to be some form of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or phencyclidine (PCP), to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations.

But he could offer no proof. It could have been a placebo. A 1963 CIA interrogation manual, code-named KUBARK, advocated the use of placebos, as well as the real thing, on prisoners. Michael Gellers, a psychologist with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service at Guantanamo, who had objected to harsh interrogation methods, told me he never saw anything related to drugs. In any case, hallucinogens don’t make subjects tell the truth. “Their function is to cause capitulation, to aid in the shift from resistance to cooperation,” the KUBARK manual explains. Yet there is tantalizing evidence that the use of such drugs since 9/11 has been, at a minimum, seriously contemplated, if not implemented. On July 17-18, 2003, for example, the CIA, the RAND Corp. and the American Psychological Association hosted a workshop entitled The Science of Deception: Integration of Practice and Theory. One session focused on the question, “What pharmacological agents are known to affect apparent truth-telling behavior?”

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, top Bush administration officials pushed military commanders for intelligence about any other impending attacks, as Philippe Sands, an international lawyer at the firm Matrix Chambers and a professor at University College London, details in Vanity Fair. Sands demonstrates that the offending interrogations weren’t conducted by a few bad apples, as the White House and Pentagon have long maintained. They were reacting to pressure from above, to go to “the dark side” and “take the gloves off,” as Vice President Cheney put it. But they didn’t know how, a December 2006 study by the Intelligence Science Board, a wing of the National Defense Intelligence College in Washington, D.C., suggested. Under pressure, interrogators started to “‘make it up’ on the fly,” the study said. “This shortfall in advanced, research-based interrogation methods,” it said, “at a time of intense pressure from operational commanders to produce actionable intelligence from high-value targets may have contributed significantly to the unfortunate cases of abuse that have recently come to light.”

US Army Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, the staff judge advocate at Guantanamo, who tried to throttle the excesses, told Vanity Fair that prison officials and interrogation managers drew inspiration from Jack Bauer, the fictional action-hero of FOX’s counterterror drama, 24, who uses torture and drugs on terrorists. “It was hugely popular,” Beaver said. Jack Bauer “gave people lots of ideas.” Beaver makes no mention of drugs in the piece. She may not have seen or heard about their use, says Ewe Jacobs, the director of Survivors International, which specializes in the psychological and medical treatment of torture survivors. “The Guantanamo camps were isolated from one another,” he says. FBI interrogators and naval investigators, fearing involvement in illegal acts, were told to leave the island. Professor Miles says, “I suspect that most of the use of interrogational drugs was by CIA and Special Ops interrogators, and thus still remains classified.” We just don’t know—yet.

The CIA kept its MKULTRA, a mind-control and chemical interrogation research program, and other drug-testing programs secret for more than 20 years. In the early 1970s, when then-CIA Director Richard Helms got wind of congressional investigators sniffing around, he ordered its records destroyed—a precursor of the agency’s recent destruction of interrogation videotapes. But it turned out that Helms missed a box. A disenchanted State Department official, John D. Marks, who had resigned over Vietnam, got hold of the remaining files and produced an astonishing book, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control. Many more books, some by persons who said they were victims of the mind-altering experiments, were produced. Few believed them. Their tales sounded looney absent patient records (which Helms had ordered destroyed) of the drug experiments (many carried out in a secret wing of Georgetown University Hospital). Likewise, few believe Padilla. Even fewer will believe the other prisoners, a number of whom are deranged from prolonged interrogation—if they ever get out. We may never know the truth.

cockburn & st clair on pennsylvania

In the final days of the campaign Clinton rhetorically obliterated Iran with the clear implication that this is what real Presidents do, whether at 3 am, after breakfast or before dinner. What was Obama meant to do? Come on as a gun-toting black man? The Pennsylvania State Troopers would have gunned him down. Hillary must know that she cannot possibly win the nomination by any rational standard. Hence the comic moment on Tuesday when her finance chairman Terry McAuliffe was asked to define what Mrs Clinton would invoke as a fair claim on the Democratic nomination. McAuliffe said it would either be a victory in the popular vote in Democratic primaries and caucuses, including Michigan and Florida, (a very remote contingency) or a lead in the pledged delegates (an impossibility) or a lead among Superdelegates, among whom, since March 6, HRC has collected 12 and Obama 88, or there would be a consensus among party leaders that Obama is incapable of beating McCain. Obama is still ahead of McCain, though thanks to Mrs Clinton’s efforts the margin is narrowing. In other words there’s no rational scenario here, except the one suggested here by St Clair a month ago that her real aim is to ensure a McCain victory this year and come back in 2012 :

In order to realize her vaulting ambition, Hillary must mortally wound Obama as candidate in the fall race against John McCain so that she can run against McCain in 2012. McCain is at best a one term president. The signs of this are as clear as the scar jagging down his face. McCain, whose resemblance to Lon Chaney becomes eerier by the day, is already an old man, older than Reagan when he was first elected. He is plagued by a cancer he refuses to speak about, a war he refuses to end and an economy that is collapsing beyond the point of recovery. Add to this prospectus, the fact that McCain is prone to the most self-destructive impulses of any American politician since Aaron Burr. His political fate will be sealed before he even swears his oath.

– Cockburn & St Clair, CounterPunch

iran must prove a negative, like iraq

– Parisa Hafezi, Reuters, April 22

Iran gave an upbeat assessment on April 22 of two days of talks with the top investigator of the IAEA, who was looking into Western reports that Iran secretly studied how to design nuclear bombs. “The talks with Heinonen were positive,” a senior Iranian nuclear official told Reuters. Iranian officials had said Heinonen’s visit was intended to advance cooperation between Iran and the IAEA. Heinonen raised a diplomatic stir in February with a presentation that indicated links in Iran between projects to process uranium, test explosives and modify a missile cone in a way suitable for a nuclear warhead. Iran has dismissed the intelligence as baseless, forged or irrelevant. But the IAEA wants substantive explanations to enable it to wind up a long inquiry into Iran’s secretive quest for nuclear power. IAEA Director ElBaradei has said the world “needs to make sure Iran did not have a weapons programme”. IAEA officials stress that the intelligence details about weapons studies, many of them from a laptop computer spirited out of Iran by a defector in 2004 and handed to the US, remain unverified but warrant thorough investigation.

amnesty’s waterboarding clip (cert. 15)

An American expert in torture techniques has denounced his government for allowing “waterboarding” to be practised against terror suspects, just as a graphic advertisement showing the brutal reality of the technique is unveiled to British cinema-goers. Malcolm Nance, who trained hundreds of US servicemen and women to resist interrogation by putting them through “waterboarding” exercises, demanded an immediate end to the practice by all US personnel. He said:

You have a purpose-built table with straps in a pattern so that people can be strapped and unstrapped quickly. The head is strapped down in such a way that they cannot resist the water. The head is elevated so the water goes down the oesophagus. The water is poured very carefully over the nose—you keep a constant pour. You are drowning in water but you don’t have the ability to hold your breath. You feel the water going in, you understand that water is filling your lungs. They seem to think it is worth throwing the honour of 220 years of American decency in war out of the window. Waterboarding is out-and-out torture, and I’m deeply ashamed President Bush has authorised its use and dragged the US’s reputation into the mud.

Mr Bush faced criticism recently when he vetoed a Bill that would have outlawed such methods of “enhanced interrogation”—the White House refuses to describe it as torture. Mr Nance, who is now an independent consultant, said the technique was futile, as well as barbaric, as the prisoner would say anything to survive, regardless of its truth. Amnesty International is leading the campaign to persuade the US to abandon the practice—a form of torture used as long ago as the Spanish Inquisition—and is stepping up its efforts with the release of a graphic and disturbing advertisement. The broadcast begins with images of glistening clear liquid, suggesting it could be promoting a new brand of vodka or gin. But the camera pulls back to show water is being poured over the face of a desperate man strapped to a table. Kate Allen, the UK director of Amnesty International, said:

Our film shows you what the CIA doesn’t want you to see—the disgusting reality of half-drowning a person. For a few seconds, our film-makers did it for real. Even for those few seconds, it’s horrifying to watch. The reality—in a secret prison with no one to stop it—is much, much worse.”

consolidating baseless rumors into “news”

Pyongyang’s Nuclear Role in Syria May Toughen US Stance
Michael Connolly, WSJ, April 23, 2008

News that North Korea was helping Syria build a plutonium-based nuclear reactor before Israel bombed the site last September could boost the position of hard-liners in Congress and the administration who have argued against a deal being negotiated to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Speculation has swirled since Israel bombed the site in September. As Jay Solomon reports, the hard-liners say Pyongyang hasn’t provided enough assurances it will dismantle its atomic arsenal in return for economic and diplomatic incentives. Neither Israel nor the US has made public information about the strike in Syria, though speculation has been widespread that the targeted site was a nascent nuclear reactor. This week, CIA is expected to begin briefing members of the Senate and House intelligence committees on the Israeli strike, according to congressional and administration officials. The briefings will be based in part on intelligence provided by the Israeli government, they said. CIA is expected to say that it believes North Korea was helping Syria develop a plutonium-based nuclear reactor similar to the Yongbyon facility North Korea built north of Pyongyang. It also is likely to say North Korean workers were active at the Syrian site at the time of the Israeli attack.

again with the baseless rumors

Jay Solomon’s WSJ story is behind a subscription wall, so it can be used to shore up the presumption of an evidence chain without disclosing the fact that there is no evidence whatever. Thanks to Joshua Landis, though, we have a copy, which I have inserted as a blockquote in front of the AP story :

North Korea Helped Syria’s Nuclear Program
Revelation Could Upset North Korea Nuclear Talks
Jay Solomon, WSJ, April 22, 2008

North Korea was helping Syria build a plutonium based nuclear reactor, the Bush administration is set to tell Congress, a revelation that could undermine diplomatic efforts to dismantle Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. This week, CIA is expected to begin briefing members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees on the Israeli strike, according to Congressional and administration officials, based in part on intelligence provided by the Israeli government. The information is expected to confirm that North Korea was helping Syria develop a plutonium based nuclear reactor similar to the Yongbyon facility North Korea built north of Pyongyang, said an official familiar with the deliberations. The briefings are also expected to confirm that North Korean workers were active at the Syrian site at the time of the Israeli attack. Less conclusive, however, is any firm evidence that Syria was attempting to develop nuclear weapons, according to the US official. “People will probably spin this information in whatever direction they want,” the official said. Gordon Johndroe of NSC said, “The administration routinely keeps appropriate Members of Congress informed of national security and intelligence matters, but I’m going to decline to comment on any specific briefings.” CIA declined to comment.

Congress to hear of alleged Syrian, North Korean nuke cooperation
– AP, April 22, via RawStory

Members of Congress will be told this week about intelligence suggesting that North Korea was helping Syria build a nuclear reactor similar to one it has constructed, a government official familiar with the matter said April 22. The Senate and House intelligence committees were scheduled to be briefed on April 24, and several other panels such as the Senate Armed Services Committee were expected to be briefed as well. North Korea has been suspected of helping Syria with a secret nuclear program, but both countries deny it. Pyongyang says it has never spread its nuclear expertise beyond its borders. Israeli warplanes bombed a site in Syria on September 6, 2007, that private analysts say appears to have been the site of a reactor, based on commercial satellite imagery taken after the raid. The site later was razed and wiped clean. Congress will be presented with evidence that North Korea was helping Syria construct a reactor similar to its facility at Yongbyon, in the west-central part of the country, said the government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. That reactor has in the past produced a small amount of plutonium, which can be a component in nuclear weapons.

One senior administration official said April 24’s briefing was scheduled because the intelligence community had been deluged for months with congressional requests for information about North Korean activity in Syria and the Israeli airstrike and felt it was now time to brief lawmakers. The official said, though, that there were concerns that the revelations if leaked or made public could encourage opponents of the administration’s attempts to negotiate an end to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. US diplomats are pressing North Korea to come clean about its nuclear cooperation with Syria as part of those talks but have had little success. At the same time, Middle East experts in the administration are worried that the timing of the briefing might upstage visits to Washington this week by Jordanian King Abdullah II and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and hurt Arab-Israeli peace prospects with allegations of nefarious activity by an Arab nation with the aid of North Korea, the official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss elements of the classified briefing.

Speculation about a possible release of information has been building, particularly in the Israeli media, for more than a week, with some reports suggesting that the briefing would include intelligence gathered by Israel and that the Israeli government had signed off on its being shared. Another official said April 24’s presentation would be a compilation of intelligence from more than one source that has been carefully analyzed over a period of months and by its nature comes with caveats. Under an agreement reached last year with the US, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia, the North is required to give a full account of its nuclear programs, including whether it spread nuclear technology. North Korea claims it gave the nuclear declaration to the US in November, but US officials say the North never produced a “complete and correct” declaration.

The Capitol Hill briefing also comes the same week a US delegation went to North Korea to press the regime for a detailed list of its nuclear programs, the latest sticking point at international nuclear disarmament talks. The leader of the delegation is expected to report back to Washington on Friday. The US recently has stepped back from its push for a detailed declaration addressing the North’s alleged secret uranium enrichment program and nuclear cooperation with Syria. Now, the US says it wants the North to simply acknowledge the concerns and then set up a system to verify the country doesn’t continue such activity in the future. President Bush defended the plans over the weekend during a meeting with new South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, saying North Korea had the burden of proof under the agreements. WSJ first reported April 22 that US intelligence officials would tell the committees that North Korea was helping Syria build a plutonium-fueled reactor.

camera’s scheme to infiltrate wikipedia

A series of emails by members and associates of the pro-Israel group CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), provided to EI, indicate the group is engaged in what one activist termed a “war” on Wikipedia. A 13 March action alert signed by Gilead Ini, a “Senior Research Analyst” at CAMERA, calls for “volunteers who can work as ‘editors’ to ensure” that Israel-related articles on Wikipedia are “free of bias and error, and include necessary facts and context.” However, subsequent communications indicate that the group wanted to keep the effort secret from the media, the public, and Wikipedia administrators:

A veteran Wikipedia editor on this list has suggested that, after setting up your account, avoid editing Israel-related articles for a short period of time; or in the very least, try to edit articles unrelated to Israel more than articles related to Israel. This isn’t a bad idea, not only to avoid the appearance of being one-topic editors, but also because it would be easier to practice editing, and to learn about Wikipedia, far from the Mideast hornet’s nest. You might practice by visiting and editing articles about other topics that interest you. Editing could mean simply fixing typos and grammar, or it could mean adding (footnoted) sentences to these topics. This way, you can gain experience without having anti-Israel partisans jumping down your throat. When signing up for a Wikipedia account, you might also want to avoid, for obvious reasons, picking a user name that marks you as pro-Israel, or that lets people know your real name. Anonymity is an accepted part of Wikipedia. Also, for the sake of greater anonymity, don’t forget to always log in before making changes. If you make changes while not logged in, Wikipedia will record your computer’s IP address.

Information obtained by EI indicates that while Gilead Ini claimed that more than 50 volunteers had come forward to participate in CAMERA’s plan, and the group had set its sights on creating dozens of new editors and administrators over a long period of time, fewer than a dozen were active at the time EI exposed the scheme. Because the effort was apparently in its early stages, only a handful had become active as Wikipedia editors.

– Electronic Intifada

Download CAMERA’s emails [PDF – 2.7 MB]

Download additional CAMERA emails [PDF – 1 MB]

the man behind the hillary win

Clinton has benefited from a lot of help from Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. A powerhouse political operator, Rendell is credited with helping Kerry wrest the state from Bush in 2004. With a major political machine and an outsize personality, he’s the type of endorser everyone wants in his corner. He also has a special appeal to the Jewish community, because of his Jewish background. As Robin Schatz, the director of government affairs for the Greater Philadelphia Jewish Federation, put it, “It doesn’t hurt that Governor Rendell, who’s beyond popular, has backed her.” Rendell, speaking to JPost ahead of Primary Day, said he expected his candidate to dominate the demographic group. “I look to Senator Clinton to sweep the Jewish vote decisively,” he declared. He said that his own endorsement “helps to a degree” among Jewish voters, adding that they would make up their own minds—before enumerating Clinton’s qualities in a bid to put her on top. “I think Jewish voters are very smart, and they’re not going to vote for a presidential candidate because a governor tells them to,” he said. “But I think Senator Clinton has a wonderful record on Israel, a wonderful record on foreign affairs, a wonderful record on the domestic issues that are important to we Jews, so I think she’s going to get the vast majority of the Jewish vote.”

– Hilary Leila Krieger, JPost

Here’s the thing about Hillary Clinton and Pennsylvania’s Tuesday primary, according to Ed Rendell, the charming and garrulous governor of Pennsylvania : “It’s Gettysburg,” Rendell says. “If the North lost at Gettysburg, it was over.” This may amount to more honesty than most campaign surrogates feel it’s their place to provide, but it is Ed Rendell’s opinion and he’s gonna give it. That’s what he does. He’s been many things—a frenetic campaigner and a prodigious fundraiser, mayor of Philadelphia for two terms in the ’90s, general chairman of the Democratic National Committee during the 2000 election, reelected to his second gubernatorial term in 2006 by a margin of 20 big fat points—but most of all, he’s an epic talker. Back in February, Rendell, 64, kicked up trouble by saying some white voters in his state might not be comfortable voting for Barack Obama. During a recent day and a half of interviews, he calls the New York senator’s chances of becoming the Democratic nominee “still a big if” and he brings up the fact that he’s criticized other Clinton supporters. Rendell knows this state, having been in politics for 30 years, going back to when he became district attorney in Philadelphia in 1977. He knows where the Clintons should appear, he knows who they should appear with, he knows when, he knows why. He knows everything. Some councilwoman calls to vent about a Clinton event she’s trying to help shape. He listens awhile and says, “Done. I will call you with the date.” Some mayor tries to cozy up to Clinton and Obama at the same time; Rendell calls another mayor and says, “I need you to call him and tell him I heard what he did.” “Let’s be crystal clear,” says Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe, talking about Rendell. “He is running the state of Pennsylvania for us.”

– Libby Copeland, WaPo

extra detail on jstreet, from last week

– from Gershom Gorenberg, American Prospect, April 15, 2008

Today’s public launch follows many months of organizing led by the new group’s executive director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, a media consultant and former Clinton administration staffer. JStreet’s advisory council includes prominent liberal fundraisers, such as Alan Solomont, former national finance chair of the DNC, and New York attorney Victor Kovner. Ben-Ami notes that Solomont is now raising cash for Barack Obama, and Kovner for Hillary Clinton. Among other members are former ambassador to Israel Sam Lewis and David Kimche, ex-director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Unlike existing Jewish peace groups, JStreet is registered for tax purposes as a 501(c)(4) organization, meaning that it can operate fully as a lobby. A sister organization, JStreetPAC, will endorse and raise money for candidates. To win JStreetPAC’s backing, Ben-Ami told me, a candidate’s position should be that “the single most important step to support Israeli security and US interests is to reach a negotiated peace agreement, a two-state solution, between the Israelis and Palestinians. The group is looking for politicians who back policies of “engagement and diplomacy” in place of exclusive reliance on military options. Phrased less diplomatically, JStreet seeks politicians who advocate a clear shift from the disastrous policies of the Bush years.

(That’s the same David Kimche that Jimmy Carter addressed his thanks to, at the start of his preliminary report on his visit : “I want to thank David Kimche and the Israel Council on Foreign Relations for this opportunity to summarize the preliminary findings of the Carter Center delegation’s study mission to the Middle East.” Also, I want to reiterate, in my opinion what JStreet is aiming for is simply to protect the Kadima government, though not necessarily Olmert in person, as it pursues the “convergence” the hardest bit of which is to get the external settlers to “converge” inside the Wall – RB)